


Go West, Young Man

by rosekay



Series: Go West, Young Man [1]
Category: Supernatural, Xī yóu jì | Journey to the West - Wú Cheng'en
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Genderswap, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Season/Series 02, The Impala as dragon prince/horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-24
Updated: 2007-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:04:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He was born from stone, not a god.</i> A reworking of the classical Chinese myth/novel <i>Journey to the West</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go West, Young Man

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2007.

He was born from stone, not a god.

But they named him one, and then he made one of himself. He still remembers the first, sharp slash of juice across his tongue, the peach that had ripened for nine thousand years, round and fragrant in his hand, its furred skin catching on his calluses. So sweet it floated bitter into his throat, soft flesh yielding like a woman beneath his teeth.

Those high on bastards told him he was beautiful, stroked him like a treasured pet. They tempted him with fine silk and smiles, the promise of heavenly flesh and a family, but he was only humiliated in the end.

They locked him beneath a mountain. Five hundred years smothered under paper wards with the strength of statues. He dreamt of the Water Curtain Cave, its pearly treasures and sweet greenery.

But now when he drew a slow, careful breath, lungs burning and hands twitching against the stone, the air was fresh, as sharp and bitter in his mouth as the peach had been centuries before. He was free.

*

Years ago, a demon had taken the form of Sam's father. In a terror, his mother sent him away. His father was dead, but the goddess let him rise again. She was Mercy, and his mother when his mother was gone.

"You were once mine," she told Sam, a hand on his cheek. "And you will be again."

She was lovely, with short dark hair that stroked the nape of her neck, slender like a boy, with robes that flowed and clung to her all at once.

When she told him to go West, to gather her scriptures and stave off the demon king's approach, he couldn't have refused.

Sam was obedient, but he had never taken to meditation well, his mind always elsewhere, wandering, questioning. He was too tall, hair clouding around his face, uncomfortable in his clothes.

She laughed when she saw his expression, pinched and uncertain. Curled around the temple's throne, long legs tossed over one armrest, her laughter was low and rich, dark against her pale skin, the smoke she blew into his face a pure tease.

Her cigarette flared, a bright smoldering point in the dim light; she never seemed to have nicotine stains.

"Oh cheer up, Sam, it's not as though you won't have help."

*

Help had a generous dusting of freckles and short, mussed hair that reminded him strangely of the goddess.

Help was, Sam had to admit, as attractive as he seemed to believe himself to be.

Help liked beer, women and mullet rock.

Help was kind of an asshole.

"I see why they kicked you out of Heaven." He'd never been good at keeping the petulance out of his voice.

Dean, though Sam doubted that that was his real name, held up his hands in appeasement. 

"Hey, hey, Sammy. No need to get nasty there."

His eyes were clear like Sam remembered his mother's had been, sharp and green in the late sunlight. He was tall, but satisfyingly enough, well short of Sam, dressed outrageously casually for the temple, nothing but a worn gray shirt and ripped jeans.

"Dean."

The goddess sounded amused, but then she usually did. Her pale hands appeared at his neck. Sam was pleased to see him stiffen a little. When her fingers fluttered out of view, there was an amulet resting high on Dean's chest, the chain grazing his collarbone.

Sam raised an eyebrow in question.

"In case he gets out of line," the goddess assured him She smiled, deep and a little wicked. "He has a mind for chaos." 

She sidled over to him, at once rising barely to his chest and towering over him divinely. Her breath still smelled of cloves and smoke.

"And here is the charm," she whispered into his ear, voice a steady drum.

Sam repeated it a little haltingly, his voice steadying as he went on. It seemed like an older incantation, words curling out into the air lonely and cold.

The effect was immediate, as Dean crumpled to the ground, brows drawn and mouth thin with pain. Sam could see where the amulet and its chain had shrunken until it was flush against the tanned, straining throat, burnished bronze pressing into the fluttering pulse point.

His words rolled to a halt. He watched Dean on the ground, sweating and gasping, hands still uselessly at his throat, skin several shades paler than it had been.

"You bitch."

"Don't insult the divine, baby," the goddess said sweetly. "It's what got you here in the first place." She glanced at Sam. "Don't worry, it's nothing permanent. Bastard's practically indestructible. If all the lords of Heaven tried and failed, there's not much you can do."

*

Dean had a reputation.

It took only two days for Sam to see why that was face to face.

They were taking a break in a bar. It was a disgusting dive of a place, but Dean seemed to like them that way.

He also liked the women that populated them, mouth incapable of halting the running commentary.

"Will you look at that ass," he whistled appreciatively, this time in reference to their waitress. Sam admitted to himself very, very quietly that her ass was moving nicely in low cut jeans – a tall Latina with hair that brushed the tanned patch of skin between where her cropped shirt ended and where the denim began to paint itself all over her impressive assets. He still rolled his eyes in disgust. It was the principle of the thing. 

Dean poured him more beer from their pitcher, grinning.

"Don't be such a prude, Sammy."

The nickname he already despised after only a few days. He had to remind himself that patience was a holy attribute.

"I'm a man of the temple," he mumbled icily.

"Doesn't mean you have to be celibate. Not like she would care," Dean jerked his thumb as if the goddess were right there beside them. As if she would ever be caught in a dump like this.

"Restraint isn't always a bad thing," Sam shot back, gulping down the beer.

"You drink," Dean pointed out, eyes sharp and amused.

"Fuck you," Sam mumbled into his glass.

"And swear apparently," Dean was looking more and more pleased with himself, almost always a bad sign. He leaned back, eyes grazing over Sam as intently as they had the girl a few minutes ago. He licked his lips. "I wonder what else you do."

Somehow, Dean managed to infuse the six simple words with something was almost obscene. Sam forced himself to look the bastard in the eye. He was sprawled in his chair, legs spread wide in obvious invitation, thighs straining the worn denim that he favored.

Then Dean was leaning forward, lean arms reaching around to trap Sam against the booth, his black T-shirt doing a spectacularly poor job of hiding the muscles shifting beneath it. Sam was distracted by the eyes, a normal green one second and just this side of inhuman the next.

They were cat eyes, large and suited to being narrowed, framed by a thick fringe of lashes that were almost girlishly long, glinting gold in the bar's low light. Then Dean licked his lips, calculated, the soft full flesh a sin all in itself. His freckles were more distinct this close, scattered across his nose and cheeks, softening the ludicrously sculpted features. They kept him from looking too plastic, too otherworldly.

And Sam had to remind himself of that. If nothing else, Dean was an alien thing. Technically a demon, bound to him by a necklace and a goddess' charm. A demon who'd been thrown out of Heaven.

He recited one of the longer meditations to himself, ignoring the heat low in his stomach, his eyes closed.

Hot breath stirred his lashes, then grazed along his cheek to his ear.

"Come on," Dean whispered, a deep rumble that went straight to Sam's dick.

He jerked, banging his head against the booth's high, wooden back when he felt a hand stroke a hot line between his legs, as if the denim weren't even there.

"Dean, we're in public."

"God," Dean said with a smug glance down, turning his cheek. "You're huge. No wonder all those demon fuckers want you so badly."

"They think my flesh will bring them immortality," Sam felt the need to clarify, his voice a little hoarse for no reason. A flush burnt up from his collar, his cheeks glowing. 

"Will it?"

For a moment, those eyes looked almost golden, glittering and dangerous, and Sam remembered that he was trapped with something inhuman, that Dean had stolen peaches from The Garden to achieve his immortality, violated a hundred divine laws. The glint of the amulet comforted him, and his lips were sluggishly shaping the first syllables of the incantation before Dean suddenly leaned back, his eyes rolling, green and harmless again.

"Ok, if you're going to be like that. No fun if you really don't want it."

He didn't stop looking. 

Sam was ultimately saved by the car.

He didn't hear anything, but Dean's head seemed to perk up. He grabbed Sam's arm and yanked him out of the booth.

"Come on, our ride's finally here. No more of this hitchhiking shit."

The ride was sleek and low and black, growling against the road. The man who got out of the car was wearing a trucker hat and a pot belly, gray whiskers twitching when he saw the two of them.

"Dean," he said amicably enough.

"Bobby! Long time no see," Dean grinned and went in for a hug that was all grunts and thick pats.

"Since you abandoned your post," Bobby sniped, the steel barely detectable in his voice.

"Since they played me for a fool."

And for a moment, Dean sounded genuinely angry, his features tightening like a statue's. There was a sour note of betrayal there. Sam looked at Bobby. His face was blank. 

"Fair enough. Anyway, here she is." He dangled the keys in front of his face.

Dean made a grab for them, but Bobby swung his arm back. "Ah, ah, orders, Dean. They go to the holy man over there."

Sam stepped forward, over Dean's sudden scowl and tense posture.

"Treat her nice," Bobby instructed him, "or that one," a wry jerk at Dean, "will have your guts."

Then he was gone, right as Dean muttered, "Damn right."

He stroked the car's hood in a way that Sam might have called sensual, his whole body canted toward it like a lover.

"Hey baby, back again, huh?" He cut a long look to Sam. "Keys."

"But he said – "

"She's mine." The glitter was back in his eyes, and Sam believed the way he leaned over the car, a possessive shift of muscles.

There weren't any tapes in sight, but Black Sabbath started screeching in his ear as soon as Dean started the ignition, a grin lighting his face.

"Are you serious?" Sam crossed his arms, disgusted.

Dean cocked his head, hand never leaving the steering wheel.

"The music, man."

Dean laughed then, low and spreading. "Rules of the game, Sammy. Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole."

*

Dean killed with the pleasure of an amateur.

The muggers who attacked them on the road were left in pieces, their blood hot and dark on his face. He had moved like an animal, a god, arms flashing out, hardly a weapon in sight. It was only a dance to him, it seemed, their lives falling like crumpled leaves beneath him. Sam was reminded that he held something deadly on a delicate leash. 

He trembled, hand clasped around the shallow slash at his arm.

Dean was at his side in a second, eyes fixed on the wound, wild and gruff.

"You ok?"

Sam stared.

"Hey, man," Dean cradled one cheek, pulling him close. "Talk to me."

"Dean," he started. "You can't – you – "

"They were going to kill you." Said as if those simple words were pages of scripture justifying every murder.

"They were human," he protested weakly.

"Doesn't matter," Dean's hands were gentle on his arms, eyes rum dark and focused, nothing untrained or accidental about what he'd done. His voice lightened a little as he worked. "You're apparently the key to everything, you stupid monk. Can't let you die, huh?"

He whistled, sharp and too piercing.

"Dai!"

Sam felt the flutter of wings in the air, close and far away at once.

The woman who was suddenly at Dean's side had dusky skin and extraordinary eyes. The shit kicker boots were more surprising, as well as the tattoos that framed her narrow features.

"I'm not a dog," she informed them both. 

"Well," said Dean, "we need a ride."

*

Sam had learned that nothing was as it seemed.

Dai was an old lover of Dean's, a dragon princess being punished for disobedience, and also, apparently, their car.

"I stole most of my weaponry from her father. She let me," Dean grinned.

Sam could see that she was close enough to be his sister, the one thing he seemed to trust.

But Dean was changeable too.

The shotgun he favored had once been a column in the palace of Dai's father, the Eastern Dragon King.

"It was a staff in the old days," Dean explained, knocking back a beer, "but who uses a staff now?"

He always told Sam he had seventy two tricks he'd picked up in training, and "maybe if you're lucky, you'll see all of them." As with everything, he made it drip with sex and promise.

Sam learned that for all his foolishness, Dean knew demons, had killed them and fucked them.

He'd thought Sarah was just a girl, trying to help her father. She'd smiled at him, been brave in the face of a world that was changing. That, Sam could sympathize with, more than sympathize. 

Dean was brutal the second he saw her, grasping a wrist, slapping her milk white face, his own a rictus of rage. She dangled in his hands, crying while called her a whore and worse, until Sam read the charm.

"Get out," he growled, knowing he'd made a mistake in trusting this thing he held on the end of a goddess' toy.

There was a brittle thing that cracked in Dean's face, softening the wine-dark shift of his eyes. 

"Do you mean it?" His voice was deceptively light, something rougher and more frightening scrabbling at its corners. 

Sam nodded, cradling Sarah, bruised and wronged, to his side.

"Then I'll be waiting for you, at the cave." Dean looked at him, then to Sarah, a desperate edge to his voice. "Always. You know that, Sam." Not Sammy. 

Water Curtain Cave, an ancient thing that seemed to belong nowhere and to no one, except Dean. Sam didn't like it, because it reminded him of the centuries that separated them.

Sarah's father revealed himself for a demon, taking lives with the paintings he sold, and she with him.

Sam cried when he killed her, her face twisted into a spider's grimace, blood black against his hands. The arm that drew him up belonged to a green eyed girl who'd hung around the gallery, all honeyed hair and quiet glances. She palmed the blessed knife from his hand, and curled herself against him.

Dean was always changing.

"I couldn't leave," muttered soft and fierce against Sam's chest. And he hugged her bruising tight, until she shifted into something larger and stronger in his arms, something that could master him and be mastered. The goddess had given this creature to him, and he realized for the first time the task that ownership was.

Dean looked up at him with eyes and were green and gold at once, the danger leashed behind them. 

*

There must have been a sadness that hung about them, Dean with some great sin in his past against the lords of Heaven; Sam thinking of his lost parents and his promise to the goddess; Dai lost from her father's arms, clinging to them because she had no one else.

It was a sadness that called out to others. 

Ash had ridiculous hair and too much fight in him for his admirable brain to be of much use. He and Dean laughed and got drunk over being thrown from Heaven. He'd blown up one too many things, had too much fun.

But when he was just drunk enough, he seemed to cry, for his old place in the army, his men, the empty cage of his armor floating around his thin, bedraggled form. 

Jess came to them from the water, another made demon like Dean. He could see that she'd been a beauty once, her golden hair untouched by the curse that had scarred her skin like she'd slept in flames.

She was mostly boisterous and sometimes far, far too quiet. She would never say what had brought her to where she was.

"Where are we going?" she would ask Sam, draped all over him, all over Dean, another one for whom alcohol brought out the tongue.

Sam looked at the three of them, demons under his hand to retrieve a holy object. He wondered what Paradise would be to any of them.

"West," he told her. "We go to the West." 

 

*


End file.
